It may seem hard to believe given all the other things going on with me lately, but I have actually been poking around looking for a game that would catch my attention. Unable to face another night of slogging around Moria with my under-construction champion, I went back to my blue space-goat from World of Warcraft, I installed and poked around in Dungeons and Dragons Online, and I did the same in the new Neverwinter. I've also tried and failed to be excited by Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep... all with no success.

They all have the same problem: they're all made to highlight the part of the RPG experience I'm least interested in, to wit: wandering around killing random monsters. There's a terrible crushing sameness to it all that leads me to despair. We have the technology to create stunning worlds-within-the-machine, and this is what we do with it? Kill 10 skeletons and return to the quest NPC for the task to kill 10 giant spiders?

Speaking of sameness, how many of these games open with you on the beach after a shipwreck? At least two of the ones I tried recently did; my memory is that Age of Conan did as well, and I think one of the Elder Scrolls games I tried did.

I want cool and interesting people to talk to! I want to see amazing things that I've never seen before! I want to be astounded by magic altering the fabric of the universe! I sure as hell don't want to compare whether this sword has a 0.5% better chance of hitting an orc than that one does.

Lord I miss you, Quest For Glory series... I remember when CRPGs were awesome and fueled by imagination. It's been a long time.